Help calculating Fighter damage

UngeheuerLich · Feb 12, 2019

TwoSix said:
It's been a while since I've 2E'd, but wasn't +5 on melee damage really high? Like 18/91-99 high?

Plus, weren't high level fighters with Weapon Specialization pretty much cuisinarts, especially with percentile strength?

I guess, somehow all our fighters in ADnD ended up with 19/71 at least... don´t know how that happened...

I´d say a fighter in ADnD was not too shabby, but in the context of the game, he was outshone at higher levels by everyone else. He was durable, but overall, without magic items he was just to be ignored, while a 5e fighter can contribute. Immunity to normal weapons was quite common in ADnD.
On the other hand, near magic immunity was also quite common. So there were times when a fighter was really needed...
overall I guess in 5e every class is more self contained and always relevant at the cost of not being overpowered in certain situations. The fighter in 5e is durable and does enough damage. If you take a battlemaster or different archetype, you always have interesting things to do.

Ovinomancer · Feb 12, 2019

Kupursk said:
Thank you for the run down of it all.

I didn't count the 4th Fighter attack on the initial post since you only get it at level 20. Otherwise, my initial assumptions of damage per attack were right, then?

I thought it a bit strange that 3 attacks for 1d8+7 was the expected. A 2e fighter could reach that with a decent % on Strength and +2 from specialization. And considering how (as you said) monsters have about double the HP from 2e to 5e I thought I might be missing something else that increased this damage.

Granted, the 5e fighters have Action Surge, slightly better critical chance, and +0.5 attacks per round at high levels, compared to the 2e fighter.

But the 2e fighter would only very rarely miss an attack after a certain level, whereas I suppose in 5e you'll probably miss more if a creature has AC on the higher range. So all in all the average damage of a 2e or 5e doesn't seem too different, whereas the HP of monsters have almost doubled (or triple or quadrupled at higher levels!)

Maybe I'm still missing something?

The thing with champion fighters is tge expanded crit range. That's their bag. They crit twice as often as anyone else, then 3 times more at higher levels. Paired with number of attacks, this adds up. Rough formula is:

#of attacks × [1.1x(average of all damage dice) + stat + other]

Multiply that by %chance to hit to get your average output against a given AC. For Champions, magic weapons that add damage dice or trigger on crits really shine.

All that said, champion fighters in general suffer in no feat games, as every other martial (including most other fighter subclasses) outpaces them in damage output without good magic gear selection (which is too individual game dependent for analysis).

André Soares · Feb 12, 2019

To me a big thing is that we are using here an mediocre fighting style and an okay-ish subclass (all this from a damage standpoint) as the basis to look at damage. By this metric the numbers won't really seem big. A sword and board fighter shines brighter in their abillity to control the battlefield, either by getting people prone with shieldmaster or by using sentinel to make NPCs stay were they are. All that while having a superior AC. Damage is okay, but not your priority, as there will probably be a caster and a rogue shooting the target from affar while you stop them from closing in on your friends.

About the -5 from sharpshooter and GWM, sure, they are a steep penalty, but with bounded accuracy ACs don't get nearly as big as in 3e, so you still have a great chance to hit.

Bacon Bits · Feb 12, 2019

TwoSix said:
It's been a while since I've 2E'd, but wasn't +5 on melee damage really high? Like 18/91-99 high?

Yes. 18/00 was +3 to hit and +6 to damage, while 17 was +1 to hit and +1 to damage. That's all I remember. Though there were an obviously improbable number of characters with percentile strength in 1e/2e because it was just too attractive.

Plus, weren't high level fighters with Weapon Specialization pretty much cuisinarts, especially with percentile strength?

Yes, but you didn't get 2/1 attacks until level 13, so they never got above 5/2 attacks even with specialization. They would have +4 to hit and +8 to damage, which is absurd in 1e/2e. It'd be like +4 to hit +16 to damage in 5e.

In 5e an 11th level 20 Str or Dex Fighter -- which any character can easily reach -- will have three attacks a round at +5 to hit and +7 damage with the Duelist style. If you do the math, +1 to hit roughly counts for +2 to damage, so +4/+8 and +5/+7 are roughly equivalent, and the 5e character has more attacks.

So, a fairly maximally optimized (without magic) character in 1e/2e (a significant difficult bar to reach) has the same damage output as a trivially optimized character in 5e. To be sure, the optimization well in 5e is a lot shallower, and it's a little unfair because 1e/2e to hit tables and NPC AC are a bit different -- by level 13 it was all about the +damage, as I recall -- but it's not that different. Again, hit point wise, the 1e/2e optimized character is much more powerful but as far as the numbers you'll be tossing out you'll be much higher much more often in 5e.

jgsugden · Feb 12, 2019

A 13th level fighter in one of my current parties has Strength 24 (Magic Item), a Flaming Sword (+2d6 fire damage, no bonus to hit) and GWM/GWF feats/abilities. He'll attack using GWM unless the enemy has a high AC (18+ estimated). That is:

8.33 average from GWF ability
10 from GWM
7 fire from flaming sword
7 from strength

Average = 32.33 damage. Attack bonus is only +7, but that is pretty good against most enemies. I've seen a similar character effectively solo a beholder in one round with Action Surge and good rolls.

FrogReaver · Feb 12, 2019

If you want damage as a mid game champion sword and board fighter then multiclassibg is likely the best way to accomplish that.

Bacon Bits · Feb 12, 2019

André Soares said:
To me a big thing is that we are using here an mediocre fighting style and an okay-ish subclass (all this from a damage standpoint) as the basis to look at damage. By this metric the numbers won't really seem big. A sword and board fighter shines brighter in their abillity to control the battlefield, either by getting people prone with shieldmaster or by using sentinel to make NPCs stay were they are. All that while having a superior AC. Damage is okay, but not your priority, as there will probably be a caster and a rogue shooting the target from affar while you stop them from closing in on your friends.

About the -5 from sharpshooter and GWM, sure, they are a steep penalty, but with bounded accuracy ACs don't get nearly as big as in 3e, so you still have a great chance to hit.

I'll agree that GWM and a two-hander will do a lot more damage. I'll also agree that by level 11 you'll want to use -5/+10 on essentially every attack. And I'd go further with your other statement and say that fighters are extremely lackluster without feats, too.

However, I disagree that Champion isn't a good choice. Fighter is the tops of the melee class damage due to Extra Attack (2) and (3), but last I knew, Champion was still the king of expected damage per round simply due to the expanded critical range. Six d12 superiority dice don't keep up after the second round (or the first if you action surge). Champions are relatively boring to play, and I would personally never play one without access to feats, but mathematically they're the best at damage and Survivor (regen hp up to half max) is stupid good.

Bacon Bits · Feb 12, 2019

jgsugden said:
A 13th level fighter in one of my current parties has Strength 24 (Magic Item), a Flaming Sword (+2d6 fire damage, no bonus to hit) and GWM/GWF feats/abilities. He'll attack using GWM unless the enemy has a high AC (18+ estimated). That is:

8.33 average from GWF ability
10 from GWM
7 fire from flaming sword
7 from strength

Average = 32.33 damage. Attack bonus is only +7, but that is pretty good against most enemies. I've seen a similar character effectively solo a beholder in one round with Action Surge and good rolls.

There is a formula you can use.

Str 24 at level 13 with a +0 magic weapon is 7 + 5 = +12 base to hit.

Damage is 2d6 + 2d6 + 7 = 8.33 + 7 + 7 = 22.33 base damage on hit.

((2 * 12) - 22.33 + 32) / 2 = 16.835.

Mathematically, you should only use -5/+10 when you're attacking an NPC with AC 16 or less.

André Soares · Feb 12, 2019

Bacon Bits said:
I'll agree that GWM and a two-hander will do a lot more damage. I'll also agree that by level 11 you'll want to use -5/+10 on essentially every attack. And I'd go further with your other statement and say that fighters are extremely lackluster without feats, too.

However, I disagree that Champion isn't a good choice. Fighter is the tops of the melee class damage due to Extra Attack (2) and (3), but last I knew, Champion was still the king of expected damage per round simply due to the expanded critical range. Six d12 superiority dice don't keep up after the second round (or the first if you action surge). Champions are relatively boring to play, and I would personally never play one without access to feats, but mathematically they're the best at damage and Survivor (regen hp up to half max) is stupid good.

I've never said the Champion is not a good choice, that's not what I think when I say it's an okay-ish option by a damage stand point. It has it's upsides sure, and crit damage is great, but you have almost 0 control over it. Also, I don't think we are presuming a featless game in this thread, as they are being mentioned all over it.

André Soares · Feb 12, 2019

Bacon Bits said:
There is a formula you can use.

Str 24 at level 13 with a +0 magic weapon is 7 + 5 = +12 base to hit.

Damage is 2d6 + 2d6 + 7 = 8.33 + 7 + 7 = 22.33 base damage on hit.

((2 * 12) - 22.33 + 32) / 2 = 16.835.

Mathematically, you should only use -5/+10 when you're attacking an NPC with AC 16 or less.

this kind of ignores "real" combat situations, as advantage is not that hard to come by and greatly improves the odds of hitting.

Help calculating Fighter damage

UngeheuerLich

Legend

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

André Soares

First Post

Bacon Bits

Hero

jgsugden

Legend

FrogReaver

As long as i get to be the frog

Bacon Bits

Hero

Bacon Bits

Hero

André Soares

First Post

André Soares

First Post

Similar Threads